earned
Huetius lived and wrote, the house of the _sous-prefet_ now stands. The
building of churches, however, is going on actively in Avranches, and
attests the reviving influence of the priests. And one should be glad to
see the revival of any form of religion, however different from one's
own, in France, if it were not that this Church is so intensely
political, and that it presents Christianity as the ally of atheist and
sensualist despotism, and the enemy of morality, liberty, justice, and
the hopes of man. The French Caesars, Napoleon I. and Napoleon III.,
though themselves absolutely devoid of any faith but the self-idolatry
which they call faith in their "star," find it politic, like the Roman
Caesars, to have their official creed and their augurs.

I went to the distribution of prizes at the school of the Christian
Brothers. I had greatly admired the schools of the brotherhood in
Ireland, and felt an interest in their system, notwithstanding their
main object, like that of the famous Jesuit teachers of the sixteenth
century, was rather to proselytize than to educate. The ceremony was
thoroughly French, each boy being crowned with a tinsel wreath, and
kissed by one of the company when he was presented with his prize.
Everything, however, was arranged with the greatest taste and skill; and
the recitations and dialogues, by which the endless distribution of
prizes was relieved, were very cleverly and gracefully performed. Some
of them were comic. The one which made us laugh most was a dialogue
between a barber and a young gentleman who had come into his shop to be
shaved. The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young
gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting,"
replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were
handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were
detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who
sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So
complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little
matters as these! While I was in France, some leading politicians were
attempting to set on foot a movement in favor of political
decentralization. They must begin deeper, if they would hope to succeed.

In Ireland, the Christian Brothers maintain the most purely spiritual
character, and the most complete independence of the state. But here,
alas! a different tendency peeped